Gallery Baton is pleased to showcase the third solo exhibition of Paolo Ventura (b.1968) Short Stories from February 4th to March 6th at the Apgujeong exhibition space.

Since his early series, Winter Stories, Paolo has actively applied Diorama techniques as a tool for rooting his artistic imagination to photographs. He has developed the style over the series by creating different selection of the images or interpretation of background. As if an art director constructs a still frame by creating the space described in the script through imagination and historical research as well as elaborately preparing the character's clothes and make-up, the artist achieves visualization of the “Scene” that used to stay in the imaginative area by combining the props in miniatures and the background that connotes spatiotemporal information through Diorama techniques. Presented as a series, his works share a particular time and space of modern Europe, especially Italy after World War II. This spatiotemporal property is used as a device to support the central theme of the series as well as to lead each independent subsection.

Paolo's Diorama techniques also suggest solution to the relative heterogeneity of photography within the logic centered to painting. It is interesting that the role of a camera becomes a neutral observer or an archivist in his works as he creates mostly all Images within the rectangular frame in their actual size and reproduces the flat but three-dimensional space of the background with his oil-painting technique.

The artist's new body of work in this exhibition, Short Stories, is a series of images consisting of listed stories that resemble the structure of short story books. A notable characteristic of short stories is that the artist along with his identical twin brother Andreas Ventura (b.1968) and his son appears as the main protagonist in every story.

Becoming the subject in the work is the style that the female photographer Cindy Sherman (b.1954) has adhered to spanning her entire career. However, there is a difference in the method of expression since Paolo appears in his works as a protagonist and a commentator leading the narrative in the time and space that he created. The stories told by exaggerated gestures relying on the background and clothing can be seen as the revival of the storytelling method in the silent picture days. The artist intentionally prepared the background space to be similar to the theatre stage but not as a replica of actual scenery, and this makes the drawn analysis more possible than the previous series.

Artificial reality created by the artist's Diorama techniques in the previous series has constantly challenged the realm of original with visual imperfections of human. In Short Stories, however, the spatial description is restrained while the characters become the main center in the composition. Therefore, the magical imagination and the journey of telling the orally passed on stories become the structure of the work.

Paolo Ventura's Short Stories will be held at Apgujeong space of Gallery Baton from February 4th to March 6th. -GB-

“Two strawberries are sitting on a wall, swinging their legs.
One strawberry turns to the other and says:
Wait a minute, we don’t have legs.”

I began to think about this exhibition as a short story that I have always wanted to write. About a non-profit art space caught in a mid-life crisis, the stuff of jokes and stereotypes, full of sordid detail and slander that nobody would care to hear. A space (a fictional character, I assure you) who wakes up every morning and immediately gets entangled with feelings of guilt, helplessness, hopelessness, pessimism and/or worthlessness. A space that becomes increasingly regretful of what has been done with it.
The show must go on, the space said, in an attempt to open both eyes, to get out of bed, begrudgingly. Another day, another show, another torrent of emails. So, I’m thinking, this space has never felt like this before it turned 35. Before 35, it had confidence. A space that dealt comfortably with all sorts of stuff, all sorts of cutting-edge shit. It remembered everyone’s name and addressed you intimately, as if you were an old friend it had known for years. In reality, it had no friends, not even on Facebook. It had followers, a legion of fans. The parties were legendary; an endless river of beer, soju and beautiful people.
This void inside me cannot ever be filled, the space thought (aloud), objects would come and go, but nothing ever sticks, I am defined by this repeated shifting around of things inside me, exhibitions built and torn. Art, placed, removed. I can’t do this any longer, it typed a Whatsapp message to a commercial gallery, with whom it had been having an on/off affair with. Don’t be silly, the gallery replied. Take a beach vacation, get drunk on cocktails and everything will be fine. Can you come over now, I miss you, the space typed. No, I’m sorry I can’t, the gallery replied, I have an opening tonight, remember?
A one trick pony galloped into the apartment. Hey, how’s it going, the pony asked. Not much, the space replied, sitting up in bed, lighting a cigarette. Hey, I saw that artist last night at the bar again, the one trick pony said, he told me it was waiting for the original idea, but I didn’t see him with anyone the entire evening. Oh, that must have sucked, the space said, coughing (loudly).
And so on.

Heman Chong is an artist and writer whose conceptually charged investigations into how individuals and communities imagine the future generates a multiplicity of objects, images, installations, situations and texts. Between 2012 and 2014, he produced “Moderation(s),” a program between Witte de With Contemporary Art in Rotterdam and Spring Workshop in Hong Kong that involved more than 50 artists and engender a conference, three exhibitions, three residencies, and a book of short stories. In 2006, he produced a writing workshop with Leif Magne Tangen at Project Arts Center in Dublin where they co-authored PHILIP, a science fiction novel, with Mark Aerial Waller, Cosmin Costinas, Rosemary Heather, Francis McKee, David Reinfurt and Steve Rushton.
Art Sonje Center was founded in 1998 and plays a crucial role in exhibiting and fostering contemporary art in Seoul, South Korea. Aimed at nurturing familiarity with contemporary artistic practice, Art Sonje Center is dedicated to the development of a program consisting of exhibitions, projects, performances, screenings, lectures, workshops, publications, and education programs.

Artists: Chen Chieh-Jen, Masaya Chiba, Yang Ah Ham, Sora Kim, Koo Jeong A, Leung Chi Wo, Liu Ding, Tadasu Takamine, Koki Tanaka, Teng Chao-Ming, Wu Tsang, Zou Zhao
Curated by Chien-Hung Huang, Yukie Kamiya, Sunjung Kim, Carol Yinghua Lu
Presented by Goethe-Institut, Space for contemporary art Co., LTD.
Supported by Art Sonje Center, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, National Culture and Arts Foundation of Taiwan, Spring Foundation
Discordant Harmony is a concept that has been proposed collectively by a team of curators brought together by the Goethe-Institut in a programme aimed at re-examining and understanding Asia in its present state by means of artistic and intellectual endeavours. Four curators from China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan have conceived of a critical conceptual framework for an exhibition project that will evolve over the course of two years and a roadmap for its practical implementation.
Asia, primarily a construct of European origin, is anything but an economic, political or cultural unity. One of the most fundamental agreements shared in this temporary working group of curators is that Asia is not a cohesive political or cultural community and that the countries in Asia share no common horizon for the imminent emergence of a unified political entity. The precedent of the European Union does not therefore provide a template for the model of co-existence in Asia. There is neither an ideological base nor an administrative structure in place for making such a community possible. Asia is more strongly affected by the political and ideological differences among its countries than it is by political harmony (sympathies) and solidarity (among nations and states).
Despite the geographical proximity and historic connections among various countries in Asia, the relevance of the idea of Asia changes with the power positions of different nations in the region, their own perception of their weight in the region, and their geopolitical ambitions. Asia is thus not a geographical concept, but a political hypothesis and construct. Based on their political imaginations, different nations and their leaderships have their own projections and expectations for Asia that find expression in military, diplomatic and cultural terms. Even under the aspect of culture, the differences among Asian countries can best be defined not by the notion of nations, but by their different historical paths and transitions in, for example, military matters, trade, religion, philosophy and so on. Each country freely formulates and constantly re-invents and articulates its perceived significance within this region.
Proceeding from the division of Asia carried out by the USA and USSR after WWII, and the assumption that the divisions of some territories were allegedly determined according to the ideologies prevalent there, we shall investigate how ideologies are formed and how they influence the formation of countries into nations. This distribution of nations between the two dominant powers ultimately affected the social, political and economic development and identity of each individual nation. But as the Cold War receded, globalization expanded and capital became the main motive behind decision-making in most countries, political and social divisions diminished. At the same time, the troubling territorial, ideological, economic and political disputes, conflicts and endless competition both within and among Asian countries remain a living reality, which cannot be overlooked or dismissed.
Discordant Harmony takes such ideological conditions as its primary premise in order to discern and understand the current power relationships and historical entanglements among several East Asian countries such as China, Korea, Japan and Taiwan. This project aims at unsettling some of the prevalent assumptions and superficial misperceptions of Asia as a unified community. In nuanced reflections and by the questions posed by the artists and their works, we hope to embark on a journey during which we try to understand Asia through multiple lenses and perspectives. The opening chapter of this ongoing project will be presented in Seoul and focus on formulating an imagination of Asia through revelations and recognitions of differences and disagreements on cultural, ideological and historical terms and their political origins through works of 12 artists from China, Korean, Japan and Taiwan. This first exhibition will be accompanied by a series of talks by participating curators, artists and scholars.
Chien-Hung Huang , Carol Yinghua Lu, Yukie Kamiya, Sunjung Kim
Press contact: press@samuso.org / Alexandra.Lottje@seoul.goethe.org

Gallery Baton is pleased to showcase the solo exhibition of Simon Morley (b. 1958) “Kiss me deadly” from March 11th to April 11th at the Apgujeong exhibition space.

Simon Morley’s exhibition at Gallery Baton presents a group of new paintings that bring cinema and literature into contact upon the monochrome surface of painting. The title of the exhibition, ‘Kiss Me Deadly’ is that of a classic Hollywood ‘film noir’ directed by Robert Aldrich made in 1955, starring Ralph Meeker as a tough private detective who kisses several women while trying to foil a plot to steal radioactive waste. The act of kissing and the threat of nuclear Armageddon are rather unsubtly bonded to each other in what is essentially a movie of Cold War paranoia.

The initial visual experience of Morley’s paintings is of an undifferentiated field of colour, and only gradually do images and words emerge from the chromatic envelope. At first, we see a list of words, which come from the indexes or contents pages of books in Morley’s collection, and are mostly sourced from books of politics, psychology, poetry, philosophy and religion. They evoke a world characterized by intellectual thought, an awareness of history the quest for meaning and value, but removed from their original contexts and functions they are enigmatic fragments. The font he has used throughout is called ‘American Typewriter’. These words appear in orderly rows, and are painted in relief and just a tone lighter than the rest of the painting. They cast shadows, and so are more clearly present, responding to the sense of touch.

“Through the general indistinctness of my work, I want to suggest something buried or suppressed, rising from the depths or fading away. Visually, I force a less structured kind of seeing, a semi-­‐blinding, such as we experience at twilight.” (extract from Artist Statement)
Behind these lines of text are seemingly random marks in a slightly different tone. Slowly, we organize these into sub-­‐sets of linked shapes so that a stable image emerges from the general field. These images are from movies, and are mostly of acts of kissing. They are cropped and removed from their context as scenes in a movie. One painting appropriates a kiss from ‘Kiss Me Deadly’, while another uses the title in the typography as it appears at the beginning of the movie. The monochromatic colours of Morley’s works are sensual but subdued, and do not consciously relate to the image or the text. While Morley intends no obvious connection between the words and the images, nor between these and the colours, he plays with our natural tendency to make meaningful connections, just as we organize the initially random-­‐seeming jumble of splotches in his paintings into patterns.

Also in the exhibition is a hanji paper covered cabinet in traditional Korean style, and through a peephole in the front it is possible to view a video within showing a loop in slow-­‐motion and reverse from Alfred Hitchcock’s’ film ‘Vertigo’ (1958) -­‐ the famous 360 degrees camera shot of Kim Novak and James Stewart kissing. There are also three aluminum cutouts based on stills of this same kiss in which the image is reduced to a simple grey outline framing empty spaces.